If Newspapers Were Stores, Would Visitors Be “Worthless” Then?
This is a wonderful article outlining phase two of the big media war with Google. In this case, the author is incensed by the Wall Street Journal saying that online visitors are "worthless" because they read one story and leave. The author here does a fantastic job of showing a) how the Journal is wrong, and b) how they could easily target their ads better to achieve what they want.
I love love love articles that offer solutions.
Let’s say a newspaper executive opens a store. They put some story headlines up in their shop window.
Now one of those old fashioned newskids comes along. You know, the type that you’d see in movies selling papers on the street. Let’s call the kid Google.
Google reads the headlines and then scampers off down the street, shouting out to people things like “Senate’s debating health care!” or “1 out of 4 homeowners are in the red!”
Some of these people are interested. They ask this Google kid for more information, and Google sends them back to the news store.
At the store, the news exec owner greets visitors by asking them what the hell they want. Perplexed, they visitors say they heard about these stories and wanted to know more. The exec shouts at them. “Get the hell out of my store, you freeloader! This is for members-only. We don’t need riff-raff like you in here.”
That’s a hell of a way to run a business, don’t you think? But it’s pretty much how News Corporation execs seem to view the world.
. . .